For the most part, if it has been labeled a 'classic' I've despised it. Frankenstein and Dracula were just plain awful. Same with everything Mark Twain ever wrote, and most of the stuff by his contemporaries. Tell you what else I disliked. Twilight. I read the first one and couldn't for the life of me figure out why people liked it. Bloody sparkly vampires...

DrendDragonspawn wrote:For the most part, if it has been labeled a 'classic' I've despised it. Frankenstein and Dracula were just plain awful.

The awfulness of those two works is not, perhaps the actually writing, per se, but the
themes: a reverse anthropology and Christology -- recreating creatures in our image,
and creating miseries as a result, and realizing that the literal meaning of "life in the
blood" inspired vampirism, and not atonement.

I read Dracula many years ago and got through it just fine (maybe I'd feel differently now but first I'd have to find my copy ); but only recently did I get a copy of Frankenstein and I just cannot get into it! I chalk it up to impatience, because after all I was an English major and should be expected to tolerate any book and only judge it afterwards... I suppose it's the writing style. Anything pre-Dickens is hard for me to really flow with (except outright poetry), and even Austen is tough going sometimes because if I blink I miss the satire. 18th-century stuff? Forget it! I did well in that course in college only because I had such a good professor. I tried reading Tom Jones long before taking the course, mainly because of its ubiquitous reprint in the wake of the Albert Finney movie. It took me for-bloody-ever.

It was pure torture to have to read Jane Eyre. I despised her and wanted to chop her head off or something.

I fortunately remember nothing of Catcher in the Rye except that I literally threw it against the wall when I was very young.

There is this thing called Chinese Cindrella. It is really hard to believe it got published and I was made to read it, but there you are. I kept wondering why the whiny brat did not simply get her neck wringed for her.

I liked Dune immensely, until the laser guns and orgy-loving women in tights showed up.

Foucault's Pendulum was a book I really wanted to read, but it turned out to be impossible to do. I mean, yes, dear author, you certainly are impressively intelligent, but please put your scalp back on and be decent.

hamlet wrote:The only thing Vampires should do in the sunlight, if they are not named Vlad Drakul, is combust.

I had a friend who insisted I watch the first two twilight movies with her. (I never considered reading the books, they did not look remotely promising.) Anyways, as this vampire, don't remember his name, was dragging Bella to show her something terrible, and it turned out to be the fact that he was shining like an eastern dancer covered in sparkly stuff... Well, really. I was scared witless.

Long VersionHey, thank's for sticking around for my evaluation. Award yourself twelve bonus points. Here's my thoughts on the hunger games. They're not bad or anything, but I don't like how they've dumbed down. The whole Roman Analogy for example. The author dropped little hints turning the capital into Romans. Gladiators, dumb fashions, emporer tryant...little things. I caught that and got to feel smart. But what do they do later on? THEY HAVE A VOMITORIUM! Anyone who's ever HEARD of Rome knows they're screaming it on the top of their lungs, so I don't get to feel smart for catching that. No, I get to feel like everyone else who read the book. Now it's not fun to read. All the mystery's gone and I don't get to work out what the metaphor is or how the author's sending what message through what. The series get's more obvious as it goes. I guess the idea was that EVERYBODY could keep reading and feel smart reading that. Some doofus in the back of class could go "Hey, I get it now!". But it doesn't work like that. It only makes the smart people feel stupid and turn the main audience into teens who are only reading it for the shock value. That's not a good thing. I know a lot of people like it but i don't.

I know that's kind of mean to fans, and I KNOW a wide variety of peole liked the books and movies, but I think it's sort of turning into Twilight. I didn't like Twilight either.

By far the book I hate the worst is Call of the Wild. I used to think I liked it, because I got a comic version from Burger King when I was five or six... but it didn't go into much detail and ended with Buck being rescued by the man in the cabin. (Thank you Burger King for not warping little kids' minds.) Years later I had a reading assignment for English, so I picked Call of the Wild. It was a chapter-by-chapter assignment, so by the time I realized what I was in for I was already committed to slogging through an entire book of this poor dog being tortured. And, of course, it doesn't end the way I thought it did.

The only other book I disliked nearly so much was a kid's book I picked up at the library called The Swan Prince, or something like that... our old library kept a lot of interesting stuff in the kid's section, up to and including LOTR, so I often browsed down there to see what interesting stuff I'd find. This book was very specifically marked as a children's book. It was about a little girl whose siblings are absolute monsters, and whose parents alternate between neglectful and harshly criticizing because they "just don't understand her". Because she's introverted and artsy. She meets a talking swan and he becomes her only friend... but this "well-meaning" man refuses to believe that the swan wants anything but to eat her. You spend half the story in suspense wondering if the swan will help her escape all these horrible adults... and at the end the "well-meaning" man shoots the swan right in front of her, so she gets to watch her only friend die. But the book is very careful to remind you, over and over again, that no matter how stupid and unsympathetic the adults act, for some reason it isn't their fault. It was like the most hopeless story I'd ever read--I can't imagine reading it to a little kid. What kind of message would that convey to them?

I'm still young to read that many books. And I can't remember all at present.I can say about the Harry Potter books, however. Actually I loved each and every book till The Goblet of Fire. Then, I got a little damped by the Order of Phoenix. And then I hated The Half blood prince. And I think Deathly Hallows is a little improvement over that. What I actually think is that JKR got highly influenced by the films. So, she started writing what she thought would be best in the films. And I dislike all the films too after Goblet, excepting only Deathly hallows part 2(which I think was wonderful but incomplete). And I was absolutely mad when JKR killed off so many characters in the last two books. And from Phoenix, whenever I got the next HP book, my first question was who is going to die in this one. That's what you get when a writer becomes a screenwriter for his/her own book.

Pillars of the Earth was a highly recommended book, I cannot think why. It seemed to have a good beginning, but very quickly it lost momentum and got bogged down in cheap tricks. I vaguely wondered if the author might have been weaned too early when small. Apart from the historical or factual inaccuracies and the not very fluent style, there were such a lot of problems with the author's assumptions and beliefs in between the lines to bring up which would be tedious. A minor jarring scene was when a woman thrust her tongue in the mouth of a man who had been starving for days. I know that DNA nagging us to pass it on is a powerful thing, but anybody who has smelt the breath of a starving person might flinch a little at the idea. Absolutely no offense meant to starving people, of course. It's just that a meal might be in order before other things.

I started that book. I'm a few pages past that particular section, in fact. I was cautious when I read the author's introduction...I thought, should someone with your lack of religious background really be writing a book of such highly religious connotations? I intend to finish, but with caution. A lot of it is just...off. (Can't say I hate it, just yet. I just feel weird.)

<------ The TVM is going on vacation!

Cats were once worshiped in Egypt. They have never forgotten this.

"They ask me what I'd like written about me when I'm gone. I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach." -- Joe Paterno

Adenydd wrote:It was pure torture to have to read Jane Eyre. I despised her and wanted to chop her head off or something.

I fortunately remember nothing of Catcher in the Rye except that I literally threw it against the wall when I was very young.

There is this thing called Chinese Cindrella. It is really hard to believe it got published and I was made to read it, but there you are. I kept wondering why the whiny brat did not simply get her neck wringed for her.

I liked Dune immensely, until the laser guns and orgy-loving women in tights showed up.

Foucault's Pendulum was a book I really wanted to read, but it turned out to be impossible to do. I mean, yes, dear author, you certainly are impressively intelligent, but please put your scalp back on and be decent.

I loved Chinese Cinderella! Bought it when I was about 12 and read it loads. Not read it for years though. I HATED Jane Eyre it took me a month to read it, and had to read a few Jane Austen for English at school and hated them. That's one of the reasons I didn't go on and do my English degree, the curriculum was Emma and I couldn't stomach it after studying it at school as well. I have read thousands of books but can't think of any others at the moment. I'm sure ill be back when I do, I'm a book fanatic.

How could I forget 50 shades of grey? Ok I didn't hate them but they were sooooo badly written and everyone raved about how scandalous they were but in fact they were pretty tame I thought! I've still read them twice though

Actually, I liked Call of the Wild. My edition always had it paired with White Fang, so I was treated to equal and opposite stories. One about a domesticated dog turned feral, another a wolf or half-wolf turning and taking Buck's place.

did anybody have the same experience that I did when I first read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings? When I first got it, they had those psychedelic Ballantine covers, and the fact the hippies were raving about it piqued my curiosity. I was kind of disappointed at first, as the actual stories had nothing to do with what was on the cover. It was only at the second reading that I got into both, realizing I needed to read the stories for themselves, not the weird cover.

I understand JRRT was very disappointed in the covers as well, asking the publisher what emus had to do with the story.

Game of Thrones. I was so excited because I can't get enough of epic fantasy type stuff, but there is just too much going on for me. I read an excerpt just to see what it was about and read something I didn't like. Then I researched and found out about some of the weird relationships and stuff and just could not get into that. You may now all hate me.

Iris, it's not so much that there's lots of plot...that I can handle. The amount of focus on sex (and in many cases disturbed sex) is what turned me away ultimately. I also try to temper my reading of things that deal with the dark arts - sorcery, werewolves, etc. and I got that impression (although faintly) in the very beginning, which is what initially made me wary. I realize this is not the case for all people, but it is enough for me.

Eilowny wrote:Iris, it's not so much that there's lots of plot...that I can handle. The amount of focus on sex (and in many cases disturbed sex) is what turned me away ultimately. I also try to temper my reading of things that deal with the dark arts - sorcery, werewolves, etc. and I got that impression (although faintly) in the very beginning, which is what initially made me wary. I realize this is not the case for all people, but it is enough for me.

Exactly!!! I could quote this for a bunch of famous series. I shall not hate you for such a sentiment - rather admire you! (I feel like I've just said this three times in a row on various threads: sorry, it's in the front of my mind at the moment. I am not trying to be anyone else's conscience.)

I found them okay, actually! I only wish it/they wasn't all written in the form of letters, though I suppose I could get over that. They could be a slog in places. The start was very intriguing in Dracula, yet afterwards I felt I hadn't got to know the actual vampire enough.

Ettinblue wrote:By far the book I hate the worst is Call of the Wild.

First time I read that I found it really dull and didn't finish it. Eventually I did and found it about bearable. It's a pretty joyless book really.

Siddharth wrote:What I actually think is that JKR got highly influenced by the films. So, she started writing what she thought would be best in the films.

My mum picked up on that in Half-Blood Prince. I can see where she was coming from what with certain parts like Harry and Dumbledore's little, frightening adventure in the cave near the end. It's a shame authors can fall into the trap maybe subconsciously of writing for the film or TV series. I don't think it was obvious enough to be distracting, mind.

As to Pillars of the Earth, I did enjoy it overall; however I felt it lost it's way a bit near the end. The last few chapters seemed rushed all of a sudden. Whatshisname's journey to France...or Spain? to find Thingybob was all too simple and fleeting.

I suppose this sort of qualifies. Usually when I get a book I like I can read it more than once. First time I read "Hitchhikers Guide" I liked it very much. but a couple of months back I didn't have anything to read so I thought id pull it out again. Got about 20 pages in and put it down, just couldn't read any more.

Aside from "DUNE", which I have mentioned before, I also disliked "Catcher in the Rye" and "Henderson the Rain King." I do not care that others found things in "Catcher." The language and attitudes were so far from my own, and very off putting. "Henderson" was just a bore.

solicitr wrote:Nobody actually likes Catcher in the Rye. It's just something the Amalgamated Sisterhood of High-School English Teachers and Related Trades has determined will be imposed on innocent students.

I wish we had a +1 button on this board, so I could hit it about a hundred times. Why, of all the wealth of English-language literature, this is the one selected to torture defenseless children, I will never understand.

Impressive. Every word in that sentence was wrong.Luke Skywalker, The Last Jedi